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American § oarfr of Commissioners for Jforrign Pissions. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 



A SERMON 



BY 



WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D. D. 



— 






BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD, 
Missionary House, 33 Pemberton Square, 

18 6 6. 




0> 



4 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 



A 



A SERMON: 1 
Br WILLIAM GL T. SHEDD, D. D. 



<* They are without excuse ; because that when they knew God, they glori- 
fied him not as God. And even as they did not like to retain God in their 
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind/' — Romans i, 20, 21, 28. 

Unless the guilt of the pagan world can be proved, the 
missionary enterprises of the Christian church, from the days 
of the Apostles to the present time, have all been a waste of 
labor. Nay more, if the sin and ill-desert of the entire human 
race, in all its generations, can not be established, then the 
Christian religion itself, involving the incarnation of God, is 
an attempt to supply a demand that has no real existence. 
Both theoretical and practical Christianity stands or falls with 
the doctrine of the universal guilt of man. It is no wonder, 
therefore, that the apostle Paul, in the opening of the most 
systematic and logical treatise in the New Testament, — the 
Epistle to the Romans, — enters upon a line of argument to 
demonstrate the ill- desert of every human creature without 
exception, and to prove that before an unerring tribunal, and 
in the final day of adjudication, " every mouth must be 
stopped, and all the world become guilty before GocL" 2 

i This Sermon was preached before the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Presbyterian Church, May 3, 1863. As the Prudential Committee consider 
such a discussion exceedingly important, at the present time, they have re- 
quested permission to publish it for the benefit of many who might not othelN 
wise see it ; which the author has kindly granted. 

2 Kom. iii. 19. 

1 



2 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAJT. 

In conducting his argument, the apostle relies upon two 
facts, in particular, to establish his position. The first is, 
that however dim or imperfect man's knowledge of God and 
the moral law may be, he nevertheless knows more than he 
puts in practice. Of the millions of idolaters in cultivated 
Greece and Rome, and the millions of idolaters in that bar- 
baric world which lay outside of the Grseco-Roman civiliza- 
tion, he affirms, that they " are without excuse ; because that 
when they knew God, they glorified him not as God." And 
the second fact upon which he founds his charge of guilt is, 
that the dim perception of God and the moral law, as well as 
the idolatrous notions that were formed upon these subjects, 
both alike originated in the wicked inclination of the heart. 
These pagans, he says, " did not like to retain God in their 
knowledge," and, therefore, " God gave them over to a repro- 
bate mind." The apostle vindicates the ways of God in the 
condemnation of man, because human conscience, be it much 
or little, is always in advance of human character ; and, also, 
because all the various forms of human error respecting the 
divine being and attributes, all the idolatry and superstition 
of the barbaric races of mankind, originate not in man's 
created and rational constitution, but in the sin of his apos- 
tate and corrupt heart. These two facts, in the judgment of 
St. Paul, justify the damnation of the heathen ; and to their 
examination we now proceed, under the light of St. Paul's 
inspiration and reasoning. 

I. The idea of God is the most important and comprehen- 
sive of all the ideas of which the human mind is possessed. 
It is the foundation of religion, of all right doctrine, and all 
right conduct. A correct intuition of it leads to correct reli- 
gious theories and practice ; while any erroneous or defective 
view of the Supreme Being will pervade the whole domain of 
religion, and exert a most pernicious influence upon the char- 
acter and conduct of men. It is this great idea of the Deity, 
inborn and constitutional to the human mind, which St. Paul 
seizes ; and he flashes its penetrating light into the recesses 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 3 

of the pagan heart. He traces back the horrible depravity of 
the heathen world, which he depicts with a pen as sharp as 
that of Juvenal, but with none of Juvenal's bitterness and 
vitriolic sarcasm, to a distorted and false conception of the 
divine being and attributes. 

But he does not, for an instant, concede that this distorted 
and false conception is founded in the original structure and 
constitution of the human soul, and that this moral ignorance 
is necessary and inevitable to the pagan. This mutilated 
idea of the Supreme Being was not inlaid in the rational 
creature, on that morning of creation, when God said r " Let 
us make man in our image, after our likeness." On the con- 
trary, the apostle affirms, that in the moral constitution of a 
rational soul, and in the works of creation and providence, 
the Creator has given to all men the media to a correct idea 
of himself, and asserts, by implication, that if they had always 
employed these media, they would have always possessed this 
idea. "The wrath of God," he says, "is revealed from 
heaven aga'hst all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men 
who held the truth in unrighteo sness, because,, that which 
may be known of God 1 is manifest in them, for God hath 
showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, even 
His eternal power and godhead, are clearly seen from the 
creation of the world, being understood by the things that 
are made, so that they are without excuse; because that when 
they knew God they glorified him not as God." 2 This is 
said, be it remembered, of the pagan world; and from this 
reasoning it appears that the pagan mind has not kept what 
was committed to it. It has not employed the moral instru- 
mentalities, nor elicited the moral truths with which it has 
been furnished. Th's reasoning implies that the pagan man 
by his constitutional structure knows more of his Maker than 
he puts in practice ; that he possesses a talent which he hides 
in the earth ; that he has a pound which he keeps laid up in 
a napkin. 

i T5 yvMarrdv, the knowable [scibile] in God; all that the finite can compre- 
hend of the Infinite. 
2 Rom. i. 18-21. 



4 THE GUILT OF THE FAGAIf. 

When Napoleon was returning from his campaign in Egypt 
and Syria, he was seated one night upon the deck of the vessel 
under the open canopy of the heavens, surrounded by his 
captains and generals. The conversation had taken a skepti- 
cal direction, and most of the party had combated the doc- 
trine of the Divine Existence. Napoleon sat silent and mus- 
ing, apparently taking no interest in the discussion,, when 
suddenly raising his hand, and pointing at the crystalline 
firmament, crowded with its mildly- shining planets and its 
keen glittering stars, he broke out, in those startling tones 
that so often electrified a million of men : " Gentlemen, who 
made all that?" The " eternal power and godhead" of the 
Creator are impressed by " the things that are made;" and 
these words of Napoleon to his atheistic captains silenced 
them. And the same impression is made the world over. 
Go to-day into the heart of Africa, or into the center of New 
Holland ; select the most imbruted pagan that can be found ; 
take him out under a clear starlit heaven, and. ask him who 
made all that, and the idea of a Superior Being, — superior 
to all his fetishes and idols, — possessing eternal power and 
godhead, immediately emerges in his consciousness * The 
instant the missionary takes this lustful idolater away from 
the circle of his idols, and brings him face to face with the 
heavens and the earth, as Napoleon brought his captains, the 
constitutional idea dawns again, and the pagan trembles be- 
fore the unseen Power. 1 

i The early Fathers, in their defense of the Christian doctrine of one God, 
against the objections of the pagan advocate of the popular mythologies, con- 
tend that the better pagan writers themselves agree with the new religion, in 
teaching that there is one Supreme Being. Lactantius (Institutiones i. 5), 
after quoting the Orphic poets, Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid, in proof that the 
heathen poets taught the unity of the supreme deity, proceeds to show that 
the better pagan philosophers, also, agree with them in this. " Aristotle," he 
says, " although he disagrees with himself, and says many things that are self- 
contradictory, yet testifies that one supreme mind rules over the world. Plato, 
who is regarded as the wisest philosopher of them all, plainly and openly de- 
fends the doctrine of a divine monarchy, and denominates the Supreme Being, 
not ether, nor reason, nor nature, but, as he is, God ; and asserts that by him 
this perfect and admirable world was made. And Cicero follows Plato, fre- 
quently confessing the Deity, and calls him the Supreme Being, in his treatise 
on the Laws." Tertullian (De test. an. c. 1 ; adv. Marc. i. 10 ; ad Scap. c. 2 ; 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 5 

But it will be objected that it is a very dim and inadequate 
idea of the Deity that thus rises in the pagan's mind, and 
that, therefore, the apostle's affirmation that he is " without 
excuse " for being an idolater and a sensualist needs some 
qualification. This imbruted creature, says the objector, 
certainly does not possess the metaphysical conception of God 
as a Spirit, and of all his various attributes, like the dweller 
in Christendom. How then can he be brought in guilty be- 
fore the same eternal bar, and be condemned to the same 
eternal death, with the nominal Christian ? The answer is 
plain, and decisive, and derivable out of the apostle's own 



Apol. c. 17), than whom no one of the Christian Fathers was more vehemently 
opposed to the philosophizing of the schools, earnestly contends that the. doc- 
trine of the unity of God is constitutional to the human mind. " God," he says, 
u proves himself to be God, and the one only God, by the very fact that he is 
known to all nations ; for the existence of any other deity than he would first 
have to be demonstrated. The God of the Jews is the one whom the souls of 
men call their God. We worship one God, the one whom ye all naturally 
know, at whose lightnings and thunders ye tremble, at whose benefits ye re- 
joice. Will ye that we prove the divine existence by the witness of the soul 
itself, which, although confined by the prison of the body, although circum- 
scribed by bad training, although enervated by lusts and passions, although 
made the servant of false gods, yet when it recovers itself as from a surfeit, as 
from a slumber, as from some infirmity, and is in its proper condition of sound- 
ness, it calls God by this name only, because it is the proper name of the true 
God. « Great God,' < good God,' and * God grant,' [deus, not dii] are words in 
every mouth. The soul also witnesses that He is its judge, when it says, < God 
sees,' « I commend to God,' - God shall recompense me.' O testimony of a soul 
naturally Christian [i. e., monotheistic] ! Finally, in pronouncing these words, 
it looks not to the Roman capitol, but to heaven ; for it knows the dwelling- 
place of the true God : from him and from thence it descended." Calvin ("Inst. 
I. 10) seems to have had these statements in his eye, in the following remarks : 
" In almost all ages, religion has been generally corrupted. It is true, indeed, 
that the name of one Supreme God lias been universally known and celebrated. 
For those who used to worship a multitude of deities, whenever they spake 
according to the genuine sense of nature used simply the name of God in the 
singular number, as though they were contented with one God. And this was 
wisely remarked by Justin Martyr, who for this purpose wrote a book ( On the 
Monarchy of God,' in which he demonstrates, from numerous testimonies, 
that the unity of God was a principle universally impressed on the hearts of 
men. Tertullian (De Idololatria) also proves the same point from the common, 
phraseology. But since all men, without exception, have become vain in their 
understandings, all their natural perception of the divine unity has only 
served to render them inexcusable." In consonance with these views, the 
Presbyterian Confession of Faith (eh. i.) affirms that " the light of nature, and 
the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, 
and power of God as to leave men inexcusable." 

i* 



b THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

statements. In order to establish the guiltiness of a rational 
creature before the bar of God, it is not necessary to show- 
that he has lived in the seventh heavens, and under a blaze 
of moral intelligence like that of the archangel Gabriel. It 
is only necessary to show that he has enjoyed some degree of 
moral light, and that he has not lived up to it. Any creature 
who knows more than he practices, is a guilty creature. If 
the light in the pagan's intellect concerning God and the 
moral law, small though it be, is yet actually in advance of 
the inclination and affections of his heart and the actions of 
his life, he deserves to be punished like any and every other 
creature under the divine government of whom the same 
thing is true. Grades of knowledge vary indefinitely. No 
two men upon the planet, no two men in Christendom itself, 
possess precisely the same degree of moral intelligence. There 
are men walking the streets of this city to-day, under the full 
light of the Christian revelation, whose notions respecting God 
and law are exceedingly dim and inadequate ; and there are 
others whose views are clear and accurate in a, high degree. 
But there is not a person in this city, young or old, ignorant 
or cultivated, in the purlieus of vice or in the saloons of 
wealth, whose knowledge of God is not in advance of his 
character. Ask the young thief, in the subterranean haunts 
of vice and crime, if he does not know more of moral truth 
than he puts in practice, and, if he renders an honest answer, 
it is in the affirmative. Ask the most besotted soul, im- 
mersed and petrified in pleasure, if his career upon earth has 
been in accordance with his own knowledge and conviction 
of what is right and required by his Maker, and he will an- 
swer no, if he answers truly. This is the condemnation, that 
light, in varying degrees it is true, but always in some degree, 
falls upon the pathway of every man, but he loves darkness 
rather than light, because his heart and deeds are evil. 

And this principle will be applied to the pagan world in 
the day of the great winding up of human history. It is so 
applied by St. Paul. He himself concedes that the Gentile 
has not enjoyed all the advantages of the Jew, and argues 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. / 

that the ungodly Jew will be visited with a more severe pun- 
ishment than the ungodly Gentile. But he expressly affirms 
that the pagan is under law, and knows that he is ; that he 
shows the work of the law that is written in his heart, his 
conscience also bearing witness, and his thoughts the mean- 
while accusing him. 1 But the knowledge of the law implies 
the knowledge of God in an equal degree. Who can feel 
himself amenable to a moral law, without at the same time 
thinking of its Author ? The law and the Lawgiver are in- 
divisible. The one is the mirror and index of the other. If 
the eye opens dimly upon the commandment, it opens dimly 
upon the Sovereign; if it sees eternal right and law with 
clear and celestial vision, it then looks directly into the face 
of God. Law and God are correlative to each other ; and 
just so far, consequently, as the heathen understands the law 
that is written on the heart, does he apprehend the Being 
who sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, and who impinges 
himself upon the consciousness of man. This being so, it is 
plain that we can confront the ungodly pagan with the same 
charge of guilt before the Eternal Judge with which we con- 
front the ungodly nominal Christian. We can tell him with 
positiveness, wherever we find him, be it under the burning 
zone of Africa or in the frozen home of the Esquimaux, that 
he knows more than he puts in practice. We will concede 
to him that the quantum of his moral knowledge is very 
stinted and meager ; but in the same breath we will remind 
him that, small as it is, he has not lived up to it ; that he, 
too, has " come short ; " that he, too, knowing God in the 
dimmest, faintest degree, has yet not glorified him as God in 
the slightest, faintest manner. The Bible sends the ungodly 
and licentious pagan to hell upon the same principle that it 
sends the ungodly and licentious nominal Christian. It is 
the just principle enunciated by our Lord Christ, the judge of 
quick and dead, when he says, " He who knew his master's 
will [clearly], and did it not, shall be beaten with many 
stripes ; and he who knew not his master's will [clearly, but 

1 Bom. li. 15. 



8 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

knew it dimly], and did it not, shall be beaten with few 
stripes." It is the just principle enunciated by St. Paul, that 
" as many as have sinned without law [uro^ojc, without written 
law] shall also perish without law." 1 

The present and future condition of the heathen world is a 
subject that has enlisted the interest of two very different 
classes of men. The church of God has pondered, and la- 
bored, and prayed over this subject, and will continue to do 
so till the millennium. And the disbeliever in revelation has 
also turned his mind to the consideration of this black mass 
of ignorance and misery which welters upon the globe like a 
chaotic ocean ; these teeming millions of barbarians and sav- 
ages who render the aspect of the world so sad and so dark. 
The church, we need not say, have accepted the biblical 
theory, and have traced the wretched condition of the pagan 
world, as St. Paul does, to their sin and transgression. They 
have held that every pagan is a rational creature, and by 
virtue of this fact has known something of the moral law; 
and that, to the extent of the knowledge he has had, he is as 
guilty for the transgression of law, and as really under its 
condemnation, as the dweller under the light of revelation and 
civilization. They have maintained that every human creature 
has enjoyed sufficient light, in the workings of natural reason 
and conscience, and in the impressions that are made by the 
glory and the terror of the natural world above and around 
him, to bring him in guilty before the Everlasting Judge. For 
this reason, the church has denied that the pagan is an inno- 
cent creature, or that he can stand in the judgment before the 
Searcher of hearts. For this reason, the church has believed 
the declaration of the apostle John, that " the whole world 
lieth in wickedness," 2 and has endeavored to obey the com- 
mand of Him who came to redeem pagans as much as nom- 
inal Christians, to go and preach the gospel to every creature, 
because every creature is a guilty creature. 



i Lukexii. 47, 48; Rom. ii. 12. The word a.rto\ovvrai in Rom. ii. 12, is op- 
posed to the (TioTrjpia spoken of in Rom. i. 16, and signifies eternal destruction, 
2 John v. 19. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAKT. 9 

But the disbeliever in revelation adopts the theory of 
human innocency, and looks upon all the ignorance and 
wretchedness of paganism as he does upon the suffering, 
decay, and death in the vegetable and animal world. It is 
the necessary condition, he asserts, of all created existence : 
and as decay and death in the vegetable and animal worlds 
only result in a more luxuriant vegetation, and an increased 
multiplication of living creatures, so the evils and woes of the 
hundreds of generations, and the millions of individuals, dur- 
ing the sixty centuries that have elapsed since the origin of 
man, will all of them minister to the ultimate and everlasting 
weal of the race. There is no need, therefore, he maintains, 
of endeavoring to save such feeble and ignorant beings from 
judicial condemnation and eternal penalty. Such finiteness 
and helplessness can not be put into relations to such an awful 
attribute as the eternal nemesis of God. Can it be, he asks, 
that the millions upon millions that have been born, lived 
their brief hour, enjoyed their little joys and suffered their 
sharp sorrows, and then dropped into " the dark backward 
and abysm of time," have really been guilty creatures, and 
have gone down to an endless hell ? 

But what does all this reasoning and querying imply? 
Will the objector really take the position, and stand to it, 
that the pagan man is not a rational and responsible creature : 
that he does not possess sufficient knowledge of moral truth 
to justify his being brought to the bar of judgment r Will 
he say that the population that knew enough to build the 
pyramids did not know enough to break the law of God ? 
Will he affirm that the civilization of Babylon and Nineveh, 
of Greece and Borne, did not contain within it enough of 
moral intelligence to constitute a foundation for future rewards 
and punishments ? Will he tell us that the people of Sodom 
and Gomorrah stood upon the same plane with the brutes that 
perish, and the trees of the field that rot and die, having no 
idea of God, knowing nothing of the distinction between 
right and wrong, and never feeling the pains of an accusing 
conscience ? Will he maintain that the populations of India, 



10 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

in the midst of whom one of the most subtile and ingenious 
systems of pantheism has sprung up with the luxuriance and 
involutions of one of their own jungles, and which has ener- 
vated the whole religious sentiment of the Hindoo race as 
opium has enervated their physical frame, — will he maintain 
that such an untiring and persistent mental activity as this is 
incapable of apprehending the first principles of ethics and 
natural religion, which, in comparison with the complicated 
and obscure ratiocinations of Boodhism, are clear as water, 
and lucid as atmospheric air ? In other connections, this 
theorist does not speak in this style. In other connections, 
and for a different purpose, he enlarges upon the dignity of 
man, of every man, and eulogizes the power of reason which 
so exalts him in the scale of being. With Hamlet, he dilates 
in j)roud and swelling phrase : " What a piece of work is 
man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in 
form and moving, how express and admirable ! in action how 
like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty 
of the world ! the paragon of animals I " It is from that very 
class of theorizers who deny that the heathen are in danger 
of eternal perdition, and who represent the whole missionary 
enterprise as a work of supererogation, that we receive the 
most extravagant accounts of the natural powers and gifts of 
man. Now, if these powers and gifts do belong to human 
nature by its constitution, they certainly lay a foundation for 
responsibility ; and all such theorists must be able to show 
that the pagan has made a right use of them, and has thought 
and acted in conformity with this large amount of truth and 
reason, with which, according to their own statement, he is 
endowed, or else they consign him, as St. Paul does, to " the 
wrath of God which is revealed from heaven, against ail un- 
godliness, and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in 
unrighteousness" If yon assert that the pagan man has had 
no talents at all committed to him, and can prove your asser- 
tion, you are consistent in denying that he can be summoned 
to the bar of God, and be tried for everlasting life or death. 
But if you concede that he has had one talent, or two talents 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 11 

committed to his charge ; and still more, if you exaggerate his 
gifts, and endow him with five or ten talents ; then it is im- 
possible for you to save him from the retributions to come, 
except you can prove a perfect administration and use of the 
trust. 1 

II. And this brings us to the consideration of the 
second fact upon which St. Paul rests his position that the 
pagan world is in a state of condemnation. He concedes 
that man outside of the pale of revelation is characterized, 
not indeed by total, but by great ignorance of God and divine 
th'ngs ; that his moral knowledge is exceedingly dim and 
highly distorted. But the fault is in himself that it is so. 
" As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God 
gave them over to a reprobate mind." 

The question very naturally arises, and is frequently urged 
by the unbeliever, How comes it to pass that the knowledge 
of God, of which the apostle speaks, and which he affirms 
to be innate and constitutional to the human mind, should 
become so vitiated in the pagan world? The majority of 
mankind are polytheists and idolaters, and have been for 
thousands of years. Can it be that St. Paul is correct 
in affirming that the doctrine that there is only one God 
is native to the human mind, — that the pagan " knows " 
this God, and yet does not glorify him as God ? The ma- 
jority of mankind are earthly and sensual, and have been 
for thousands of years. Can it be that St. Paul is correct 
in saying that there is a moral law written upon their heart, 
forbidding such carnality, and enjoining purity and holiness ? 
Some theorizers argue that because the pagan man does not 

i Infidelity is constantly changing its ground. In the 18th century, the 
skeptic very generally took the position of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and 
maintained that the light of reason is very clear, and is adequate to all the reli- 
gious needs of the soul. In the 19th century, he is now passing to the other 
extreme, and contending that man is kindred to the ape, and within the sphere 
of paganism does not possess sufficient moral intelligence to constitute him 
responsible. Like Luther's drunken beggar on horseback, the opponent of 
revelation sways from the position that man is a god, to the position that he is 
a chimpanzee. 



12 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

obey the law, therefore he does not know the law ; and that 
because he has not revered and worshiped the one Su- 
preme Deity, therefore he does not possess the idea of such 
a Being. They look out upon the pagan populations, and 
see them bowing down to stocks and stones, and witness 
their immersion in the abominations of heathenism, and con- 
clude that these millions of rational beings really know no 
better, and that therefore it is unjust to hold them respon- 
sible for their polytheism and moral corruption. But why do 
they confine this species of reasoning to the pagan world ? 
why do they not bring it into nominal Christendom,- and ap- 
ply it there ? Why does not this theorist go into the midst 
of European civilization, — into the heart of London or 
Paris, — and gauge the moral knowledge of the sensualist by 
the moral character of the sensualist ? Why does he not tell 
us that because this civilized man acts no better, that therefore 
he knows no better ? Why does he not maintain that be- 
cause this voluptuary breaks all the commandments in the 
decalogue, therefore he must be ignorant of all the command- 
ments in the decalogue ? that because he neither fears nor 
loves the one only God, therefore he does not know that 
there is any such Being ? 

It will never do to estimate man's moral knowledge by 
man's moral character. He knows more than he practices. 
And there is not so much difference in this particular between 
some men in nominal Christendom, and some men in Hea- 
thendom, as is sometimes imagined. The moral knowledge of 
those who lie in the lower strata of Christian civilization, and 
those who lie in the higher strata of Paganism, is probably 
not so very far apart. Place the imbruted outcasts of our met- 
ropolitan population beside the Indian hunter, with his belief 
in the Great Spirit, and his worship without images or picto- 
rial representations ; * beside the stalwart Mandingo of the 
high table lands of Central Africa, with his active and en- 

i " There are no profane words in the (Iowa) Indian language ; no light or 
profane way of speaking of the « Great Spirit' "—Foreign Missionary, May, 
1863, p. 337. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGA.N. 13 

terprising spirit, carrying on manufactures and trade with 
all the keenness of any civilized worldling; beside the na- 
tive merchants and lawyers of Calcutta, who still cling to 
their ancestral Boodhism, or else substitute French infidelity 
in its place ; place the lowest of the highest beside the 
highest of the lowest, and tell us if the difference is so very 
marked. Sin, like holiness, is a mighty leveler. The " dis- 
like to retain God " in the consciousness ; the aversion of 
the heart toward the purity of the moral law, vitiates the 
native perceptions alike in Christendom and Paganism. 

The theory that the pagan is possessed of such an amount 
and degree of moral knowledge as has been specified has 
awakened some apprehensions in the minds of some Chris- 
tian theologians, and has led them unintentionally to foster 
the opposite theory, which, if strictly adhered to, would lift 
off all responsibility from the pagan world, would bring them 
in innocent at the bar of God, and would render the whole 
enterprise of Christian missions a superfluity and an absurdity. 
Their motive has been good. They have feared to attribute 
any degree of accurate knowledge of God and the moral law 
to the pagan world, lest they should thereby conflict with the 
doctrine of total depravity. They have erroneously supposed 
that if they should concede to every man, by virtue of his 
moral constitution, some correct apprehensions of ethics and 
natural religion, it would follow that there is some native 
goodness in him. But light in the intellect is very differ- 
ent from life and affection in the heart. It is one thing to 
know the law of God, and quite another thing to obey it. 
Even if we should concede to the degraded pagan, or the 
degraded dweller in the haunts of vice in Christian lands, 
all the intellectual knowledge of God and the moral 
law that is possessed by the ruined archangel himself, we 
should not be adding a particle to his moral character or his 
moral excellence. There is nothing of a holy quality in the 
mere intellectual perception that there is one Supreme Being, 
and that he has issued a pure and holy law for the guidance 
of all rational creatures. The mere doctrine of the Divine 
2 



14 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

Unity will save no man. There is no redemptive power in it. 
It forgives no sin, and it delivers from no bondage to sin. 
" Thou believest," says St. James, " that there is one God ; 
thou doest well ; the devils also believe and tremble." Satan 
himself is a monotheist, and knows very clearly all the com- 
mandments of God ; but his heart and will are in demoniacal 
antagonism with them. And so it is, only in a lower degree, 
in the instance of the pagan and of the natural man in every 
age and in every clime. This intellectual perception, there- 
fore, this constitutional apprehension of the first principles of 
natural religion, instead of lifting up disobedient man into a 
higher and more favorable position before the eternal bar, 
casts him down to a deeper perdition. Light that is abused 
ministers to a greater condemnation ; and the Eternal Judge 
will say to every man, Jew or Gentile, that has held any por- 
tion or degree of moral truth in unrighteousness, as his apostle 
said to the unfaithful Jew : " Thou therefore that teachest 
another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man 
should not steal, dost thou steal ? thou that sayest a man 
should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery?" 1 
If the heathen knew nothing at all of his Maker and his duty, 
he could not be held responsible, and would not be sum- 
moned to judgment. As St. Paul affirms : " Where there is 
no law, there is no transgression." But if when he knew 
God in some degree, he glorified him not as God to that de- 
gree ; and if, when the moral law was written upon his heart, 
he went counter to its requirements, and actually heard the 
accusing voice of his own conscience after so doing, then 
his mouth must be stopped, and he must become guilty be- 
fore his Judge, like any and every other disobedient creature. 
It is this serious and damning fact in the history of man 
upon the globe, that St. Paul brings to view, in the affirma- 
tion that the pagan world " did not like to retain God in their 
knowledge." He accounts for all the idolatry and sensuality, 
all the darkness and vain imaginations of paganism, by refer- 
ring them to the aversion of the natural heart. The primary 

/• i Rom. ii. 21, 22. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 15 

difficulty was in the affections of the pagan, and not in his 
understanding. He knew too much for his own comfort in 
sin. The contrast between the divine purity that was mir- 
rored in his conscience, and the sinfulness that was wrought 
into his heart and will, rendered this inborn constitutional 
idea of God a painful one. It was a fire in the bones. If 
the Psalmist, a renewed man, yet not entirely free from human 
corruption, could say : " I thought of God, and was troubled," 
much more must the totally depraved man of paganism be 
filled with terror, when in the thoughts of his heart, in the 
hour when the accusing conscience was at work, he brought 
to mind the one great God of gods, the vast unseen Power, 
whom he did not glorify, and whom he had offended. It was 
no wonder, therefore, that he did not like to retain the idea of 
such a being in his consciousness, and that he adopted all 
possible expedients to get rid of it. The apostle informs us 
that the pagan actually called in his imagination to his aid, in 
order to" extirpate, if possible, all his native and rational ideas 
and convictions upon religious subjects. He became vain in 
liis imaginations, and his foolish heart, as a consequence, was 
darkened, and he changed the glory of the incorruptible God, 
the spiritual unity of the Deity, into an image made like to 
corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and 
creeping things. 1 He invented idolatry, and all those " gay 
religions full of pomp and gold," in order to blunt the edge 
of that sharp, spiritual conception of God, which was contin- 
ually cutting and lacerating his wicked and his sensual heart. 
Hiding himself amidst the columns of his idolatrous temples, 
and under the smoke of his idolatrous incense, he thought, 
like Adam, to escape from the view and inspection of that 
Infinite One, who from the creation of the world downward 
makes known to all men his eternal power and godhead ; 2 
who, as St. Paul taught the philosophers of Athens, is not far 
from any one of his rational creatures ; 3 who, as the same 
apostle taught the pagan Lycaonians, though in time past he 

i Rom. i. 21-23. 2 Rom. i. 20. 3 Acts xvii. 27. 



16 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, yet left not 
Mmself without witness, in that he did good, and gave them 
rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with 
food and gladness* 1 

The first step in the process of mutilating the original idea 
of God as a unity and an invisible Spirit,. is seen in those 
pantheistic religions which lie behind all the mythologies of 
the ancient world, like a nebulous vapor, out of which the 
more distinct idols and images of paganism are struggling. 
Here, the notion of the divine unity is still preserved ; but 
the divine personality and holiness are lost. God becomes 
a vague impersonal power, with no moral qualities,, and no re- 
ligious attributes ; and it is difficult to say which is worst in 
its moral influence, this pantheism which, while retaining the 
doctrine of the divine unity, yet denudes the Deity of "all that 
renders him an object of love and reverence, or the grosser 
idolatries that succeeded it. For man can not love, with all 
his mind and heart and soul and strength, a vast force working 
blindly through infinite space, and everlasting time. 

And the second and last stage in the process of vitiating 
the true idea of God appears in that polytheism in the midst 
of which St. Paul lived, and labored, and preached, and died \ 
in that seductive and beautiful paganism, that classical idol- 
atry, which still addresses the human taste in such a fascinat- 
ing manner in the Venus de Medici and the Apollo Belvi- 
dere. The idea of the unity of God is now mangled and cut 
up into the " gods many," and the " lords many ; " into the 
thirty thousand divinities of the pagan pantheon. This com- 
pletes the process. God now gives his guilty creature over to 
those vain imaginations of naturalism, sensualism, and idol- 
atry, and to an increasingly darkening mind, until in the 
lowest forms of heathenism he so distorts and suppresses the 
concreated idea of the Deity, that some specula tists assert 
that it does not belong to his constitution, and that his 
Maker never endowed him with it. How is the gold become 
dim ! How is the most fine gold changed t 

i Acts xiv. 16, 17. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 17 

But it will be objected that all this lies in the past. This 
is the account of a process that has required centuries, yea 
millenniums, to bring about. A hundred generations have 
been engaged in transmuting the monotheism with which the 
human race started, into the pantheism and polytheism in 
which the great majority of it is now involved. How do you 
establish the guilt of those at the end of the line ? How can 
you charge upon the present generation of pagans the same 
culpability that Paul imputed to their ancestors eighteen cen- 
turies ago, and that Noah the preacher of righteousness de- 
nounced upon the antediluvian pagan ? As the deteriorating 
process advances, does not the guilt diminish ? and now, in 
these ends of the ages, and in these dark habitations of cru- 
elty, has not the culpability run down to a minimum, which 
God in the day of judgment will " wink at" ? 

We answer no; because, in the first place, the structure 
of the human mind is precisely the same that it was when 
the Sodomites held down the truth in unrighteousness, and 
the Roman populace turned up their thumbs that they might 
see the last drops of blood ebb slowly from the red gash in 
the dying gladiator's side. Man, in his deepest degradation,- 
in his most hardened depravity, is still a rational intelligence : 
and though he should continue to sin on indefinitely, through 
cycles of time as long as those of geology, he can not unmake 
himself; he can not unmold his immortal essence, and abso- 
lutely eradicate all his moral ideas. Even paganism itself has 
its fluctuations of moral knowledge. The early Roman, in 
the days of Numa, was highly ethical in his views of the 
Deity, and his conceptions of moral law. Varro informs us 
that for a period of one hundred and seventy years the Ro- 
mans worshiped their gods without any images ;' and Sal- 
lust denominates these pristine Romans " religiosissimi mor- 
tales." And how often does the missionary discover a tribe, 
or a race, whose moral intelligence is higher than that of 
the average of paganism. Nay, the same race, or tribe, 
passes from one phase of polytheism to another ; in one in- 

i Varro, apud Plutarch., Numa, 8; Augustine, De CivitateDei, IV. xxxi. 
2 * 



18 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

stance exhibiting many of the elements and truths of natural 
religion, and in another almost entirely suppressing them. 
These facts prove that the pagan man is under supervision ; 
that he is under the righteous despotism of moral ideas and 
convictions ; that God is not far from him ; that he lives and 
moves and has his being in his Maker ; and that God does 
not leave himself without witness in his constitutional struc- 
ture. Therefore it is, that this sea of rational intelligence 
thus surges and sways in the masses of paganism ; sometimes 
dashing the creature up the heights, and sometimes sending 
him down into the depths. 

But we answer no, to the question that is put by the ob- 
jector, for a second reason that is still more conclusive, be- 
cause it is still more practical. The guilt of the pagan can not 
be reduced to a minimum and disappear, because, wherever 
he is found, he is found to be self-willed and determined in 
sin. He does not like to retain truth in his mind, or to obey 
it in his heart. Go into the center of Africa to-day ; select 
out the most imbruted heathen ; bring to his remembrance 
that class of truths with which he is already acquainted, and 
add to them the still larger class that issue from revelation, 
and you will find that he is predetermined against them. He 
takes sides with all the depth and intensity of his being, with 
that sinfulness which is common to man, and which it is the 
object of both ethics and the gospel to oppose and remove. 
This pagan loves the sin which is forbidden, more than he 
loves the holiness that is commanded. We grant that the 
temptations that assail him are very powerful ; but are not 
some of the temptations that beset any and every man very 
powerful ? We grant that this wretched slave of vice and 
pollution can not possibly break off his sins by righteousness, 
without the renewing and sanctifying grace of God ; but 
neither can any man in the heart of Christendom. He loves 
his chains and his bondage, even as every other sinner loves 
them ; and this proves that his moral corruption is the same 
self-willed thing in principle with that of mankind in every 
age and grade of civilization. It is the rooted aversion of 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 19 

the human heart toward the purity and holiness of God ; it is 
" the carnal mind which is at enmity against God, for it is 
not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." ' 

Ask the faithful and devoted missionaries who go down 
into these habitations of cruelty to pour more light into the 
mind, and to induce the pagan to leave his idols and his sen- 
sualism ; ask them if they find that sinful human nature is 
any different there, from what it is elsewhere, so far as yield- 
ing to the claims of God and law is concerned. Do they 
tell you that they are uniformly successful in persuading these 
sinners to leave their sins ? that they never find any self-will, 
any determined opposition to the holy law of purity, any 
preference of a life of license, with its woes here upon earth, 
and hereafter in hell, to a life of self-denial with its joys 
eternal ? On the contrary, they testify that the old maxim 
upon which so many millions of the human family in nominal 
Christendom act, — " Enjoy the present, and jump the life to 
come," — is the rule for the mass of the heathen population, of 
whom so few can be persuaded to leave their idols and their 
lusts. Like the people of Israel, when expostulated with by 
the prophet Jeremiah for their idolatry and pollution, the ma- 
jority of the pagan world, when endeavors have been made 
to reclaim them, have said to the missionary : " There is no 
hope ; no, for I have loved strangers, and after them I will 
go." ! There is not a single individual of them all who has 
been necessitated to do wrong. Each one of them has a will 
of his own, and loves the sin that is destroying him more 
than he loves the holiness that would save him. Notwith- 
standing all the horrible accompaniments of sin in heathen 
society, the wretched creature prefers to enjoy the pleasures 
of sin for a season rather than come out and separate him- 
self from the unclean thing, and begin that holy warfare and 
obedience to which his God and Saviour invite him. This, 
we repeat, proves that the sin is not forced upon the rational 
creature. For if he hated his sin, nay, if he felt weary and 
heavy-laden because of it, he would leave it. The Christian 

1 Rom - ™. 7. 2 j er . ii. 25. 



20 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

missionary announces a free grace, and a proffered assistance 
of the Holy Ghost, of which he may avail himself at any 
moment. Had he the feeling of the weary and penitent prod- 
igal, the same father's house is ever open for his return, and 
the same father seeing him on his return, though yet a great 
way off, would run and fall upon his neck and kiss him. But 
the heart is hard, and the spirit is utterly selfish, and the will 
is perverse and determined, and therefore the natural knowl- 
edge of God and his law which this sinner possesses by his 
very constitution, and the added knowledge which the efforts 
of benevolent Christians have imparted to him, are not strong 
enough to overcome his inclination and induce him to break 
off his sins by righteousness. To him, also, as well as to 
every sin-loving man, these solemn words will be spoken in 
the day of final adjudication : " The wrath of God is revealed 
from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of 
men who hold clown (y.ctTe/eiv) the truth in unrighteousness ; 
because that which may be known of God is manifest within 
them ; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible 
things of him, even his eternal power and godhead, are clearly 
seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the 
things that are made ; so that they are without excuse, because 
that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God." 

The subject which we have thus discussed is exceedingly 
fertile in its inferences and teachings ; but we shall limit our- 
selves to two, that have a direct bearing upon the enterprise 
of Foreign Missions. 

1. In the first place, it is evident that if the positions that 
have been taken are correct, natural religion consigns the en- 
tire pagan world to eternal perdition. 

Strictly speaking, it is not Christianity that sends the race 
of mankind to hell, but it is ethics. Christ himself says that 
He came not into the world to condemn the world, but that 
the world through Him might be saved. 1 Men are condemned 
already, previous to redemption, by the law written on their 
hearts; by their natural convictions of moral truth; by natural 

l John iii. 17. 



THE GUILT OF THE PAGAK. 21 

religion, whose truths and dictates they have failed to put in 
practice. Those theorists, therefore, who reject revealed reli- 
gion, and remand man back to the first principles of ethics 
and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a 
tribunal that damns him. "Tell me," says St. Paul, "ye that 
desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law ? The law 
is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live by 
them." 1 " Circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law ; 
but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made 
uncircumcision." 2 If man had been true to all the principles 
and precepts of natural religion, it would indeed be religion 
enough for him. But he has not been thus true. The entire 
list of vices and sins recited by St. Paul in the first chapter 
of Romans is as contrary to natural religion as it is to re- 
vealed. And it is precisely because the pagan world has not 
obeyed the principles of natural religion, and is under a curse 
and a bondage therefor, that it is in perishing need of the 
truths of revealed religion. Little do those know what they 
are saying, when they propose to find a salvation for the 
pagan in the mere light of natural reason and conscience. 
What pagan has ever realized the truths of natural conscience 
in his inward character and his outward life ? What pagan is 
there in all the generations that will not be found guilty be- 
fore the bar of natural religion ? What heathen will not need 
an atonement for his failure to live up even to the light of na- 
ture r Nay, what is the entire sacrificial cultus of heathenism, 
but a confession that the whole heathen world finds and feels 
itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience ? 
The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and 
fearful looking-for of divine judgment, and they endeavor to 
propitiate the offended power by their offerings and sacrifices. 

2. In the second place, it follows inevitably from these 
positions of St. Paul, concerning the guilt of the pagan, that 
nothing but revealed religion can save him from an eternity 
of sin and woe. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ well knew the significance of his 

1 Gal. iv. 21 ; iii. 12. 2 Rom. ii. 25. 



22 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

last command to his apostles and his church, to go into all 
the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He knew 
what a measure and degree of moral truth had been wrought 
into the structure of the millions of mankind. He knew that 
there is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. 1 He knew that that truth had been held in unright- 
eousness, and that that light had shined in the darkness that 
comprehended it not. He knew that upon the plane of natu- 
ral religion and conscience the responsible creature stood a 
guilty criminal ; that he was without excuse ; that he was 
utterly unsheltered, and must be pierced through and through 
by the glittering shafts of the law which he had known and 
which he had violated. The incarnation of the eternal Son of 
God is utterly unintelligible, except upon the supposition that 
every human creature is a guilty creature ; and this guilt is 
inconceivable except upon the supposition, that when he 
knew God he glorified him not as God. 

It is this dark and awful fact which the church of Christ is 
continually to keep in mind. The whole world lieth in wick- 
edness, 2 and wickedness is crime, and crime must either be 
cancelled by the blood of the God-man or be punished through 
endless ages. We are summoned to take the same view of 
this wretched and sinful world which the Founder of Chris- 
tianity took. We are to look through his eyes, and breathe 
his spirit. His eyes are a flame of fire, and pierce through 
all the self-deceptions by which man would extenuate or nul- 
lify his sin; and his spirit is that of self-sacrificing love to the 
guilty. If the Man of Sorrows saw in the mass of mankind a 
mass of perdition, his followers must see the same. If, in 
the midst of all his tenderness and self-sacrificing love for the 
human soul, he never uttered a single word that leads us to 
suppose that that soul merits any thing but hell-punishment, 
or will receive any thing but this, if it stands upon its own 
merits in the day of judgment; if the pitiful Son of God and 
Son of Man, in all his various representations of the eternal 
future, never spoke a syllable that can be tortured into the 

i John i. 9. 2 1 John v. 19. 



THE GTJII/T OF THE PAGAN. 23 

theory of the innocency of any human being, be he Jew or 
Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, young or old; then 
the disciple is to be as the' Master. The church of Christ 
must look out upon the millions of India, China, and Africa, 
as the Son of God looked down upon them from the heights 
of the eternal throne, and must behold in them millions upon 
millions of guilty and lost moral agents. Like him, they 
must engage in efforts for their salvation, and not waste their 
energies in futile queryings and doubtings. The problems 
before the Eternal Mind respecting the sin and salvation of 
man were far more difficult of solution, than those which beset 
the mind of the Christian or the skeptic. For our Lord and 
Saviour knew infallibly how many millions upon millions of 
the race, for whom he proposed to pour out his life-blood, 
would reject him. He knew long beforehand how many mil- 
lions upon millions of this miserable and infatuated race would 
re ist, and ultimately quench, the only Spirit that could reno- 
vte and save them. The checkered career of the Christian 
church, its alternating progress and decline in different ages 
and countries, the unfaithfulness of his own redeemed, and 
their lukewarmness in obeying his parting command to evan- 
gelize the nations, — the whole career of Christianity, so dis- 
couraging in many of its aspects, lay distinct and clear before 
that omniscient eye. But it did not dampen his love or his 
ardor (if we may use such a word) for an instant. Even to 
his own view, much of his love and self-sacrifice would run to 
waste, so far as the actual redemption of immortal souls is 
concerned. He knew that, like his prophet, he was to stretch 
out his hand all day long, yea, ages after ages, to a disobe- 
dient and a gainsaying race. But he never faltered, and he 
never hesitated. He veiled his deity in the "muddy vesture 
of decay," and suffered and died in it, with the same willing- 
ness and alacrity as if he had foreknown that every human 
soul would have welcomed the great salvation. 

Now, if our Lord and Master, knowing infallibly that mil- 
lions upon millions would trample upon his blood, and that % 
millions upon millions, through the unfaithfulness of his own 



24 THE GUILT OF THE PAGAN. 

church, would never even hear of the passion in Gethsemane 

and Calvary, — if our Lord and Master, in the face of these 

discouragements, while sternly as the eternal nemesis of God 

charging home an infinite guilt upon the human race, yet 

tenderly as a mother for a child received upon his own person 

the awful vengeance of that nemesis, we and all his people, 

in all time, must breathe in his spirit and imitate his example. 

We have no infinite and infallible knowledge by which to 

discourage us in our efforts at human salvation. We know 

not who will reject the message, or whether any will. We 

can not 

" look into the seeds of time, 
And say which grain will grow? and which will not." 

We only know that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses all sin 
from every soul upon whom it drops. And we know that our 
Redeemer and King has commanded us to proclaim this fact 
to every human creature. Events and successes are with him. 
The church has nothing to do but obey orders, like soldiers in 
a campaign. 

The great and the simple work before the church is to 
sprinkle the nations with the blood of atonement. This it 
does, instrumentally, when it preaches forgiveness of sins 
through Christ's oblation. The one great and awful fact in 
human history, we have seen, is the fact of guilt. And the 
great and glorious fact which the mercy of God has now set 
over against it, is the fact of atonement. It requires no high 
degree of civilization to apprehend either of these facts. The 
henighted pagan is as easily convicted as the most highly 
educated philosopher ; and his reception of the atonement of 
God is, perhaps, even less hindered by pride and prejudice. 

Let the church, therefore, dismissing all secondary and 
inferior aims, however excellent and desirable in themselves, 
go forth and proclaim to all the nations that " they are with- 
out excuse, because that when they knew God they glorified 
him not as God;" and also that " God so loved the world 
that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in him should not perish but have everlasting life." 






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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 






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